Then Yellow Leaf began to dance an erratic, weird dance--and, somehow, I thought of dead leaves eddying in a raw wind as he whirled around the fire, singing his first scalp-song: "Who are the Yanyengi,[13] that a Saguenay should fear them? They are but Mowaks,[14] and Real men jeer them! I am a warrior; I wear the lock! I am brother to the People of the Rock![15] Red is my hatchet; my knife is red; Woe to the Mengwe, who wail their dead! I wear the Little Red Foot and the Hawk; Death to the Maquas who stone and mock! Koué! Haï!" _An Oneida_ "Hah! Hawasahsai! Hah!" _The Saguenay_ "Who are the Yanyengi, that Real men should obey them? We People of the Dawn were Born to slay them! I eat twigs in winter when there is no game; What does he eat, the Maqua? What means his name? To each of us a Little Red Foot! To each his clan! Let the Mengwe flee when they scent a Man! Koué! Haï!" [Footnote 13: The Huron for Canienga.] [Footnote 14: A Mohican term of insult, but generally used to express contempt for the Canienga.] [Footnote 15: Oneida.] And "Hah! Hawasahsai!" chanted the Oneidas, trotting to and fro in the uncertain red light, while we white men sat, chin on fist, a-watching them; and the little sorceress of Askalege beat her palms softly together, timing the rhythm for lack of a drum. An hour passed: my Indians still danced and sang and bragged of deeds done and deeds to be accomplished; my young sorceress sat asleep, her head fallen back against me, her lips just parted. At her feet a toad, attracted by the insects which came into the fire-ring, jumped heavily from time to time and snapped them up. An intense silence brooded over that vast wilderness called the Drowned Lands; not a bittern croaked, not a wild duck stirred among the reeds. Very far away in the mist of the tamaracks I heard owls faintly halooing, and it is a melancholy sound which ever renders me uneasy. I was weary to the bones, yet did not desire sleep. A vague presentiment, like a mist on some young peak, seemed to possess my senses, making me feel as lonely as a mountain after the sun has set. I had never before suffered from solitude, unless missing the beloved dead means that. I missed them now,--parents who seemed ages long absent,--or was it I, their only son, who tarried here below too long, and beyond a reasonable time? * * * * * I was lonely. I looked at the scalps, all curing on their hoops, hanging in a row near the fire. I glanced at Nick. He lay on his blanket, sleeping.... The head of the little Athabasca Sorceress lay heavy on my shoulder; she made no sound of breathing in her quiet sleep. Both her hands were doubled into childish fists, thumbs inside.